The basics

What are the differences between MediaWiki, Wikimedia, Wikipedia and wiki?

I want to use a MediaWiki instance to (blank). Am I allowed to?

MediaWiki is free software: this means that you may use it for any purpose without legal hindrance.
Furthermore, its licensing conditions apply solely to the software itself.
This means that although many wikis license their content under a permissive license, you are not obliged to license the content submitted to your wiki in any particular way.
Of course, as a project founded to support sites like Wikipedia, we encourage you to license the texts you write under a free license, but, in short, you are not required to.

If you wish to alter or amend the software itself, in general, you are permitted to, but there are some restrictions and you should consult the full text of the GNU GPL version 2 for details.
Because MediaWiki is provided free of charge, there is no warranty, to the extent permitted by applicable law.

Installation and configuration

Where do I download MediaWiki?

How to install MediaWiki?

Installing MediaWiki takes around 10 to 30 minutes, and involves uploading/copying files, and running the installer script to configure the software.
See the Installation Guide, where you will also find the minimum system requirements.

How do I install MediaWiki using a package?

Many Linux distributions provide MediaWiki in a packaged format for that distribution.
The MediaWiki development team refers you to your Linux distribution for assistance with installing, configuring or using them.
The individual communities and companies who maintain such packages should provide installation instructions.

Be warned that third-party distributions may be older versions, so pay close attention to compatibility information for directions and extensions.

For information on an alternative way of setting up more than one wiki using the same server, database and source, see Steve Rumberg's (archived version) excellent exposé and additional comments from users.

Does MediaWiki work with safe_mode enabled?

Does MediaWiki require shell access?

Shell access (SSH) is not required for installing MediaWiki, but it is highly recommended.
Without shell access, it may even be difficult for you to get a backup of your wiki, or to upgrade to a new version.
Some maintenance tasks are not possible at all without shell access.
Many major extensions work best with shell access.

How do I install extensions?

How do I add extra namespaces?

How do I enable uploading?

File uploads are an often-used feature of MediaWiki, but are disabled by default in all current release versions.
To enable them, first make the upload directory (default images) writable by the web server (chmod -R 777 ./images or allow the Apache user to write to it, etc.) then set $wgEnableUploads to true in LocalSettings.php (i.e. "$wgEnableUploads = true;").
If you get a "failed to mkdir" error when you try to upload, it probably means that there's a permissions problem.

How do I completely disable caching?

How do I allow uploading of additional formats?

MediaWiki requires that allowed file upload formats are specified using the $wgFileExtensions configuration directive.
Usually this directive is situated in LocalSettings.php in the root of your MediaWiki installation.

For example, to extend uploading to PDF files, add the following to LocalSettings.php:

$wgFileExtensions[]='pdf';

To extend uploading to more than one type of file, use the following syntax

Initial user was not created by installer or it is not an administrator

Sometimes, the installer fails to create the default user, or the user table is lost for some reason.
There are a couple of options for solving this:

maintenance/createAndPromote.php

If your MediaWiki is older than 1.16, make sure AdminSettings.php is set up (see AdminSettings.sample)

Execute maintenance/createAndPromote.php --username <new user name> --password <password for that user> from the shell. Append --bureaucrat to command line if you want that user to become a bureaucrat, in addition to becoming an administrator.

This will create a new user and promote them to an administrator.
For help, run the script with the parameter --help.

How do I require an email address be specified at registration?

How do I put MediaWiki into Read Only mode?

How do I change default user preferences?

MediaWiki version:

≥ 1.4

The MediaWiki default user preferences are in the language file, i.e. languages/Language.php if you're using English.
Don't edit that file, just use it for reference, like you do with DefaultSettings.php.

Say if you want to change the default number of search results on a page.
Language.php says:

/* private */$wgDefaultUserOptionsEn=array(...'searchlimit'=>20,...)

To change it to 50, put this in your LocalSettings.php:

$wgDefaultUserOptions=array('searchlimit'=>50);

Note that you are setting $wgDefaultUserOptions, which contains the site overrides, not $wgDefaultUserOptionsEn, which contains the software defaults.
Any settings in $wgDefaultUserOptions will override those set in the language file.

To change the default namespaces to be searched, in any version of MediaWiki, set $wgNamespacesToBeSearchedDefault in LocalSettings.php to an array mapping namespace indexes to boolean values.
For example, to search the main namespace and the category namespace, use:

How can I make MediaWiki run faster?

How do I enable a drop-down list of search suggestions?

Upgrading

Moving

Is it possible to move my wiki to a different machine?

Yes.
It should be.
In essence, you will be backing up your old installation and then "restoring" it onto the new machine.
Finally, you will have to make additional modifications to update the wiki configuration so that everything points to the new location.

How do I move my wiki to a different server?

Changing the interface

How do I change the logo?

The logo that appears in the top left of each page is determined by the $wgLogo configuration line in the LocalSettings.php file.

There are two ways to change the logo:

Upload a picture to your wiki using the normal file uploading interface. This allows the logo to be replaced easily, so you may want to protect the page if you use this method.

Then add the $wgLogo line to LocalSettings.php, for example:

$wgLogo="{$wgUploadPath}/6/62/mylogo.png";

Upload an image to your server by other means (such as FTP).

Add the $wgLogo line to LocalSettings.php, for example:

$wgLogo="{$wgScriptPath}/mylogo.jpg";

(In this example, the image is in the same folder as the LocalSettings.php file.)

If you want to change the logo in only specific pages, override #p-logo css's background-image property or use third party extension like Extension:LogoFunctions.

Caution:

Do not simply overwrite the default logo installed with MediaWiki (/skins/common/images/wiki.png); this file will be overwritten when you upgrade.

A good size for a square logo is 135x135px or 150x150px, but the logo need not be square, especially if it contains text below an image. The maximum logo size in Vector is ~160x160px, while MonoBook's is ~155x155px. A logo that is too large will be cut off.

How do I edit the wiki's CSS?

You shouldn't edit the CSS files (such as common.less) directly, because it will make upgrading harder if you need to apply your customizations each time you upgrade the software.
Instead you need to edit a wiki page called MediaWiki:Common.css if you want to apply your CSS changes for all skins, or a wiki page called MediaWiki:Vector.css if you want to apply the customizations only for the Vector skin.

The content of the MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Vector.css pages always overrides the default CSS styles specified in the skin files.

How do I hide the left vertical navigation toolbar

In other words, how do you make the main content div take up 100% of the display, hiding the logo, toolbox, navigation and search engine?

How do I hide the categories at the bottom of each page?

You can hide display of the categories on each page by modifying your MediaWiki:Common.css and adding:

.catlinks{display:none;}

Can I customize the logo in the top left corner? If so, how?

The logo is a portlet block without a pBody section.
It is identified by the p-logo id.
The background image is specified by the $wgLogo variable, which is defined in DefaultSettings.php.
This location is relative to the web server root and not the system root.
Redefine this in LocalSettings.php to change the image.
If set wrong there will be no image on the page; check your web server error log and adjust accordingly.
However the size of the p-logo will need to be big enough for the logo if it is not to be clipped.
This is set in the stylesheet (main.css in Monobook), under the p-logo style, the default setting is:

#p-logo{z-index:3;position:absolute;/*needed to use z-index */top:0;left:0;height:155px;width:12em;overflow:visible;}

Reducing the size of the logo

Note that a tag is on top of the logo so if you are trying to reduce the size of the logo's portlet you will also need to change the #p-logo a and #p-logo a:hover rules.
The default setting for these is:

How do I customize the link-URL of the site-logo in the top left corner of all pages that activates when the site-logo is clicked upon?

By default, clicking the site-logo takes you to the main site-page.
If you want to change which internal site-page is the "main" site-page, edit MediaWiki:Mainpage.

To make the link of the site-logo link externally to any other arbitrary URL, you can add a hook to your LocalSettings.php to override the mainpage href which is used by the logo.

/* Change the main page url used in things like the logo to an absolute url */$wgHooks['SkinTemplateOutputPageBeforeExec'][]='lfChangeMainPageURL';functionlfChangeMainPageURL($sk,&$tpl){$tpl->data['nav_urls']['mainpage']['href']="http://www.your-desired-url.com/";// Point the main page url to an absolute urlreturntrue;}/* Change the main page url used in things like the logo to a url of another page on the wiki */$wgHooks['SkinTemplateOutputPageBeforeExec'][]='lfChangeMainPageURL';functionlfChangeMainPageURL($sk,&$tpl){$tpl->data['nav_urls']['mainpage']['href']=Title::newFromText('ThePage')->getLocalURL();// Point the main page url to a wiki page's urlreturntrue;}

How do I change the icon in the browser's address line (favicon)?

Simply upload your favicon.ico to the root of your domain/subdomain, make sure file name is in lower case and its name is favicon.ico

Tip: The favicon image should be either 16 x 16 pixels or 32 x 32 pixels.

Rewrite Rule

If you are using a rewrite rule in .htaccess to remove "index.php" from the URL, you will also need to add an exception for .ico files.
Simply add the following rule to your .htaccess:

RewriteRule .*\.ico$ - [L]

This rule must appear before the index.php rule.

Case sensitivity

When uploading the favicon file, be sure the filename is in lowercase. (That is, "favicon.ico", not "Favicon.ico".)
A lot of servers (e.g., those on UNIX-like operating systems) will not be able to find the file unless its name is in lowercase.

How do I customize the navigation bar?

The contents of the navigation bar which appears to the left of each page using the Vector or the Monobook skin are determined by the MediaWiki:Sidebar page there on your wiki.
For information on customising these, please see Manual:Interface/Sidebar.

How do I put a text message (sitenotice) on every page?

You can also add text to MediaWiki:Anonnotice to create a message that only displays for logged-out users.
It is often a good idea to transclude the site notice on the anon notice to make sure that logged-out users still get the information on the site notice.

How do I change which page is the main page?

By default, MediaWiki looks for a page with the title Main Page and serves this as the default page.
This can be changed by altering the contents of MediaWiki:Mainpage to point to a different title.
If this does not change the 'Main Page' link included on the sidebar at install time, edit MediaWiki:Sidebar.

How do I change the Main Page title?

Simply click on the "Move" tab, and move the page to the desired page title.

If your main page uses a localized name or you have renamed the main page you need to change the page-Main_Page part. You can find a correct parameter by viewing HTML source of the main page and searching for the body tag.

For example, if your language is Lojban, the body tag looks like this:

There was a user preference to hide the table of contents, it was removed in MediaWiki 1.23 (phab:T54813).

How do I change the interface text?

Interface text is altered using the MediaWiki namespace.
For each deviation from the default in the site language there is a page MediaWiki:Englishmessagename, and for each deviation from the default in each other language a page MediaWiki:Englishmessagename/languagecode.
(Since release 1.9 there are no pages for messages equal to the default.).
On creation of a page the edit box autofills with the default.
When creating a page to override the default it is useful to first save the default version, to allow diffs with it.
See also Help:System message.

How do I change the interface language?

The new default interface language will be applied to all users who haven't ever customised it.

If you want to provide users the possibility to create and choose pages and interface elements in languages other than the default one of the wiki, you need the Translate extension, which can make your wiki multilingual.

In old versions, the new default will not affect existing users, so if you're logged in, you will need to change your language settings in your preferences.

If you want to change the language settings for all existing users, use the userOptions.phpmaintenance script.
For instance, to have all users with English set use French instead, run:

How do I add/remove tabs throughout my wiki?

For example, to remove the talk tab and then add a tab that always goes to the main page you would save this code in extensions/AR-Tabs.php:

MediaWiki version:

≥ 1.21

<?phpif(!defined('MEDIAWIKI')){die("This is not a valid access point.\n");}$wgHooks['SkinTemplateNavigation'][]='replaceTabs';functionreplaceTabs(&$skin,&$links){// Remove the talk actionunset($links['namespaces']['talk']);$maintitle=Title::newFromText(wfMessage('mainpage')->inContentLanguage()->text());// Add an additional link$links['namespaces']['main']=array('class'=>false,// false or 'selected', defines whether the tab should be highlighted'text'=>wfMessage('sitetitle')->text(),// what the tab says'href'=>$maintitle->getFullURL(),// where it links to'context'=>'main',);returntrue;}

and then add

require_once("extensions/AR-Tabs.php");

to the bottom of LocalSettings.php

How do I remove a tab on only one page?

MediaWiki version:

≥ 1.9

For example, to remove the Discussion (talk) page tab from the Main Page, on the MediaWiki:Common.css page add:

How can I suppress actions and special pages?

NOTE: MediaWiki is not designed for this kind of usage! It should be noted that the following 'answer' is a hack that only 'works' with the Apache webserver. Note also that this system is not foolproof, it's just one step further than hiding the links (see above).

Suppressing actions and special pages can be useful when you want to create the illusion of a static website via a particular URL or VirtualHost, but also have an 'internal' view that is a true wiki.
i.e. if you have an inward facing 'view' of your wiki that users can edit, and an outward facing 'view' that should appear like a static website (no history, no discussion, etc., etc.).

After hiding all the appropriate links (see above), if you are using the Apache web server, you can disable actions and special pages using the following rewrite rules:

Above, a request for 'http://www.my.domain.com/wiki/Page_name?action=edit', for example, will be simply rewritten to 'http://www.my.domain.com'. Similarly any page in the Special namespace (with the exception of Special:Search) will be rewritten to 'http://www.my.domain.com'. Remember, this is only a hack, and isn't intended as a solution for a secure CMS.

Note that you will need to adjust the above rules to match your specific URL naming schema.

Other issues to consider when trying to lock down a site like this is the API and POST requests for the wiki content (rather than GET).

How do I edit error messages?

Special:Allmessages contains a complete list of messages (error or otherwise), that can be edited.

How do I add a reply link to default signature tildes (~~~~) template?

For example, changing the entries to [[{{ns:user}}:$1|$2]] ([[{{ns:user_talk}}:$1|talk]]) will put a link to users' talk pages and [[{{ns:user}}:$1|$2]] ([{{fullurl:{{ns:user_talk}}:$1|action=edit&section=new}} Reply]) would give a more direct link.

Users can change their signature in their preferences.

How can I change what the <title> of each page is? Where do I make changes?

Most of the text that you want to change can be found in the namespace of MediaWiki.

In order to change titles, texts, announcements, etc., go to Special:AllMessages, where you will see the text associated with the pages you wish to change.
You need to log in as an administrator to edit the protected entries in the MediaWiki namespace.

If you want to change the title in your browser, you need to edit MediaWiki:Pagetitle.
Go there and edit it just like you would any other page in your wiki.

In recent versions of MediaWiki, MediaWiki:Pagetitle is $1 - {{SITENAME}} by default. If {{SITENAME}} is producing the wrong text for you, you need to set $wgSitename in your LocalSettings.php.

If $wgSitename is correct in LocalSettings.php but {{SITENAME}} is still wrong, it may be that you're using a user-contributed language file which incorrectly sets $wgSitename to a transliteration of "Wikipedia".
Edit the language file to correct this.
For example, the Hebrew language file is at languages/LanguageHe.php in your wiki directory.

How can I force users to preview before they save?

How do I add more buttons on the edit page?

How can I get more special characters or tags clickable on the edit page?

For adding more selectable special characters, etc., below the edit field, see Extension:CharInsert.

How can I use a different skin (e.g. Wikipedia's old Monobook skin) on my wiki?

MediaWiki version:

≥ 1.16

While the Vector skin is the default skin for all installations made with MediaWiki 1.17 and newer, the Monobook skin has been the default before.
See Manual:$wgDefaultSkin for more information on configuring your default skin.

How do I disable external links from showing in the printable version of a page?

This will override the styles defined in the CSS files coming with the MediaWiki source code.
For more information, see Manual:CSS.

If instead you want to have the external links underlined in the printable version, then also add the following code:

#contenta.external{text-decoration:underline!important;}

How do I change the text of the article (page name) tab of my wiki's main page?

To change the text of the tab, as one example used in Wikipedia, you first open the page "MediaWiki:Mainpage-nstab".

After you've done that, click Edit and type in the edit box the text you want to be seen later on the main page - that's it.
Don't forget to save the page as well.

Basic usage

How do I edit a page?

To edit a page, simply click the edit link that appears on each page.
Using the default Vector skin, this is in the form of a tab at the top of the page.
A form will appear, containing the existing markup.
When you have finished making modifications, click the Save button to commit your changes.

How do I delete an old version of a page?

Old versions of page data are retained in the database and can be accessed via the page history features.
This is useful for reviewing changes and correcting or reverting undesirable ones, but in some cases, administrators might want to make this information unavailable, for legal reasons, or to reduce the size of the database.

Administrators can delete an old revision of a page by deleting the page, and then selectively undeleting revisions to be kept

The Oversight extension (also known as HideRevision) can be used to move harmful revisions out of page histories on older versions of MediaWiki (<1.16).

For newer MediaWikis (1.14+), you can enable the core RevisionDelete feature that allows privileged users to remove single revisions from page histories.

The maintenance/deleteOldRevisions.phpmaintenance script can mass-delete all old revisions of pages and their associated text records.

How do I view the printable form of a page?

MediaWiki includes stylesheets which automatically style a page appropriately when it is printed; using the print or print preview function within your browser ought to render the page in a printable form.

You can also view this printable form using the printable version link in the sidebar under Toolbox or Print/export if using the Collection extension.

Go to the second page (SECOND PAGE) and place the code you wish to have for your signature.

If you don't have this structure, you will still be inserting all your signature code into the raw code wherever your signature is used, because the software will insert "SUBST" in your preferences.
You may not mind this, in which case you only need one page.
If you want the raw code to only display {{FIRST PAGE}}, which looks a lot cleaner, then you need to use the two-page structure.

How do I add the sandbox functionality to my installation of the wiki?

In wiki terms, a sandbox is simply a "play pen"; a page which users can mess about in.
This is an ordinary page created in the normal manner, and can be located wherever you like.
There is no special sandbox functionality built into MediaWiki.

Users often inquire about the Wikipedia sandboxes, which seem to be self-emptying.
This is not quite correct; there are a number of volunteers who run bots to clean these up and return them to a certain state at regular time intervals.

This fixes your upload links.
Change the replace text so it fills in your url such as http://www.yourwiki.org/uploads/filename

You are now ready to import ImportStage3.txt into your database with a command such as

mysql -u<mysqluser> -p<yourpass> <db name> < ImportStage3.txt

Note: If your importUseModWiki.php outputs an XML file instead of SQL statements, this probably means you have a rather new version of MediaWiki.
In such a case, you can import the XML file -- see Importing a Wikipedia database dump into MediaWiki, towards the bottom of the page ('Import XML').
Don't forget to rebuild all the tables -- that page also explains how to do that.

Importing from other types of files

There are a variety of tools available to help convert content from HTML (and other formats) to MediaWiki markup.

Templates imported from other wikis (such as Wikipedia) don't work for me

You probably need to install some extensions used on the source wiki, such as ParserFunctions or sometimes Cite.
Also, make sure that you copied all site CSS and JavaScript required by the template.

Customising further

I want to have multiple wikis, but only require registration once

If you're starting from scratch or you're switching from one wiki to multiple, you can use $wgSharedDB and $wgSharedTables to have all wikis share the user table of the "main" wiki. You can share other tables as well, as long as they don't contain any data dependent on non-shared tables or data specific to one wiki. See Manual:Shared database for examples and more information.

If your wikis are already established and you want to switch to a single sign-on, you can use the CentralAuth extension. It has a few more features than a shared user table, but it's more difficult to configure and it's tailored toward a Wikimedia-style setup. However, it is easier than attempting to completely merge multiple user tables into one.

How do I change noindex nofollow

The OutputPage class includes an addMeta method which can be used to add meta tags.
The RequestContext can be used to get the relevant OutputPage object.

To add further Meta tags just add further lines as last lines of the function addMetaTags() like:

$out->addMeta ( 'description', 'This is a meta description.' );

Why...?

…is the Help namespace empty?

The Help namespace currently ships in a blank state.
It's up to you how much or how little help you give to your site visitors and whether this relates to other aspects of your site.
Obviously you can easily link your visitors to help resources elsewhere.

We don't currently have a clean, internationalised set of help pages under a free license.
However, if you want to copy in some help information onto your site, about how to use a wiki (a MediaWiki powered wiki) you are free to copy the Help:Contents from this wiki.
This set of pages have been deliberately created for this purpose, with wiki-neutral information, and no license restrictions.
See Project:PD help. More help is available at the Meta-Wiki MediaWiki Handbook.

…are some of my images not showing up after an upgrade?

Several users have reported that, following an upgrade or a moving of their wiki, several images fail to be shown inline.
The files exist, and the image description pages show a MIME type of unknowncode>/unknown and, in some cases, a warning about potentially dangerous files.

To fix this, run the maintenance/rebuildImages.php script from the command line.
This will set MIME information for each file in the database.

Recent versions of MediaWiki implement responsive images. Due to a bug, if the server locale is set to one that uses commas instead of dots for representing a decimal point, images may not render on some browsers/devices. This can be confirmed by inspecting a thumbnail of a medium or big image on a page with the browser tools, looking at the HTML code, and see if the srcset attribute contains commas instead of dots when representing the 1.5x value.

…are all PNG files not being turned into thumbnails?

After upgrading to a more recent version of PHP, it is possible a different MimeMagic.php function is being used to detect file MIME types, particularly the built-in PHP function mime_content_type, which fails to detect PNG files.
Search the web for mime_content_type png for information on fixing this bug at the PHP level, possibly by editing your magic.mime file.

…is a search for a short keyword giving no hits?

By default, MediaWiki uses MyISAM's fulltext matching functionality to allow searching page content.
The default settings for this mean that words of less than four characters won't be indexed, so will be ignored in searches with older versions of MediaWiki.

Note that some particular words may still not be indexed if they are in MySQL/MariaDB's default stopword list.

…can't I download MediaWiki 1.32?

MediaWiki 1.32 is in a development state at present, and has not been packaged into a general release.
The code can be downloaded from Git if desired.
Or, if you want the latest development version packaged as an archive, get it at mwSnapshots.

…doesn't this work? It works on Wikipedia!

Wikipedia and other Wikimedia web sites use the current version of the code in development; at present, this is MediaWiki 1.33.0-wmf.4 (b34307c), pulled from the current development branch.
Coupled with the use of several extensions, this means that functionality between these wikis and your particular setup may differ.

…do I get logged out constantly?

If this is happening constantly to all users, it probably means that caching is misconfigured. Setting $wgSessionCacheType = CACHE_DB; can be used to determine if caching is the cause of the problem. If that solves the problem, you should still investigate what is wrong with your caching configuration.

…doesn't my wiki work on Sourceforge?

…is it a good idea to keep user accounts?

At many times you just want to remove a user account out of the wiki either because it belonged to a spammer account or you just feel like it.
The appropriate choice is to block the account or rename it if needed.
Here is why:

"If the user has made edits, then removing rows from the user table
cause theoretical loss of referential integrity. Now, to be honest
with you, I can't think of any conditions where this would cause an
actual problem; "undefined behaviour" is the phrase we use.

What I'd suggest doing, to be on the safe side, is running a couple of
quick updates against the database:

UPDATErevisionSETrev_user=0WHERErev_user=<current_user_id>

UPDATEarchiveSETar_user=0WHEREar_user=<current_user_id>

What this will do is cause MediaWiki to treat the revisions as having
been made anonymously when generating things like page histories,
which should eliminate any problems caused by these routines
attempting to check user details from other tables.

If the user has caused log entries, i.e. rows in the logging table, or
uploaded images, then the situation becomes trickier, as you'll have
to start mopping up all the rows everywhere and it could become a bit
of a mess, so if the user's done anything other than edit, I would
strongly recommend just blocking them indefinitely.

If the username is offensive or undesirable, then you could consider
renaming it using the RenameUser extension."

Another option is to give Admins the 'hideuser' right, and indefinitely block the user with the Hide username from edits and lists option selected.

Anti-spam

Where do I get the spam blacklist from and how do I install it?

The spam blacklist extension can be found in Git, just like all other officially supported extensions.
For installation and configuration instructions, consult the README file and extension page over here.

How do I use $wgSpamRegex to block more than one string?

$wgSpamRegex (see Manual) is a powerful filter for page content.
Adding multiple items to the regex, however, can be awkward.
Consider this snippet:

This example code allows convenient addition of additional items to the regex without fiddling about each time.
It also demonstrates two popular filters, which block some of the most common spam attacks.

I tried that but it didn't work

I had a problem, I came to this page and it told me how to fix it. But it didn't work, the problem is still there!!!!

Nine times out of ten this is because you didn't clear your cache.
The simple test for this is to request a page that hasn't been requested before.
Select the part of the URL in the address bar that contains the page title (e.g. Main_Page).
Twiddle your fingers on the keyboard for a while, hit enter.
Check if the problem is on that page too.

MediaWiki uses both a server-side cache and a client-side cache, so clearing your browser cache is often not enough.
See the relevant entry above for more details.

Here are some other things to check:

Were you editing the right file? Try inserting some garbage into the file you edited, does it break anything?

A great debugging tool in this case is to create a file called phpinfo.php, containing only <?php phpinfo() ?>. Upload it into your web directory and invoke it with your browser. Check the document root and the path to php.ini.

Were you editing the right part of the file? Did you create a duplicate entry in php.ini? Add new settings to the end of LocalSettings.php, not to the beginning.

If you created a .htaccess, are you sure AllowOverrides is on? Ask your hosting provider.